"Hey you, wake up. I'm getting lonely."
"What?"
"I didn't really expect you to fall asleep on me. I'm not sure if I should be hurt or satisfied."
"If it is a free choice between the two... there you go."
"For a minute I thought I killed you, you know."
"Not dead. Sleeping. Closest I can get to it these days."
"I was just thinking, the only way I could ever be more than just a brief blip on your radar would be to kill you. Then I might get some points in your life story."
"Well, feel free. Just let me get some sleep first."
"I read all that stuff you wrote, you know. I just wish I could be as important as some of those women in your life."
"If you kill me, who will write the story?"
That was it, though. He got out of bed and walked over to his desk.
"What are you doing? Come back to bed?"
"No, not just yet. I just realized something."
"What?"
"She manipulated the ending of the story."
The rest of it had been bad enough, and quite bad enough to cover something as mundane as her real objective. She had read all of the drafts of the trilogy of novels he had been working on for years, intending for them to become that which he was remembered by. Even though he had no idea if he would ever complete them, if he would ever be satisfied with them, the idea of the novels took a back seat to everything else that had happened between them.
"She knew she was the muse that inspired them. She knew that when taken together the three novels would define everything I believed in. Fuck monkey. She never gave a shit about the relationship or holding onto me. She wanted to manipulate the story so it would reflect her beliefs instead of mine. It is all so clear now."
He opened the last chapter of each of the three novels and stared at them.
"Some people are chaotically insane but most have a logic to their insanity that plays by their rules and therefore is difficult to sort out by those who adhere to acceptably normal logic... She boxed me into a corner. This is the reason I can't finish these fucking novels."
"What the hell are you talking about? Come back to bed, I miss your cock."
"Yeah, well, so do I... look, you have to understand this. She knows that I have this rule, in the universe of my writing once something is done it cannot be undone. It can be rewritten and reinterpreted, but whatever happens stays happened. In the first two novels they end with her basically being the one who redefines the entire meaning of what has happened. In the third she dies and is mourned..."
"And how am I supposed to feel?"
"Less taken than I've been. I'm fighting ghosts I can't define and you really don't want to get close to me."
"I'm young. I'll bounce."
"Too young, if I can be honest. You need to go home. You can't stay here tonight."
"Why not? You have someone else coming over?"
"When I get like this it doesn't make for a good night. I have to try to resolve something and I can't with you here."
"Shut up and come back to bed. Sleep in my arms, you'll feel better in the morning."
He tried. He really did, but not long after he fell asleep the voices came back. "Please... kill me..." whispering in his ear. He woke up, sat bolt upright and turned and put his hands around her neck and screamed, "Why won't you leave me alone?!"
She was in tears, but amazingly calm under the circumstances. "Keith, it is me, Britty. It's okay."
He let go of her neck and got up and walked into the bathroom. He turned on the light. The mirror was covered in blood and the bathtub was filled with it. He turned off the light and sat down on the floor in the dark, clutched his chest and began crying. "Why won't you leave me alone?"
She knocked ever so gently on the bathroom door.
"I'm going to go. Please call me tomorrow and please don't do anything stupid."
"I can't promise you that."
"Just promise me you will still be around tomorrow."
"I can't die by my own hand, if that is what you mean, but I can't control fate."
"Just think about me and know I'll come back if you want me to."
"Okay. Thinking about your thighs will keep me alive."
"Dude, you know, you have your moments. You really do. I'd hate for the world to lose those moments."
"Well, if I was twenty years younger--"
"Thanks. You'll be fine."
After he heard her leave he fell back down onto the bathroom floor and sighed.
For Brittany who said writing about it would make me feel better.